| Miss Vericker's Adventures

Mealtime Monday: Arugula, Proscuitto, Fig and Cheese Flatbread

Monday, July 27, 2015

Oh boy! Even writing this post is making me want to go back and bake a ~~second,~~ okay, third flatbread. This is my all-time favorite quick, easy and DELICIOUS meal. The whole thing takes 20 minutes from start to savoring the very last bite. Perfect for that 'Let's-Get-into-the-Friday-Vibe-Crack-Open-Your-White-Wine' Thursday night meal. Let's get cookin'!

Preheat the oven to 475 degrees.

Take a bag of pre-made store-bought dough and cut it into the correct portion then flour and stretch/roll it out.
{HINT: When I am devouring this solo, I usually cut the dough into quarters. If my husband and I are eating this, I use thirds or half of the dough depending on our starvation level.}
Use a generous portion of olive oil on a foil-lined baking sheet. Spread the dough out as thin as possible on the sheet.

Drizzle a little olive oil on the top of the dough so it doesn't dry out. For an extra flavor kick, sprinkle some Italian seasoning and cracked pepper on top of the uncooked dough.

Into the oven for 8-10 minutes depending on the thickness of your dough. You want to take it out when the bottom of the dough is nice and golden brown.

Allow the cooked flatbread to cool momentarily before spreading fig preserves/jam over the top.

Tear pieces of proscuitto and your favorite cheese spread out on top of the flatbread and fig. I loooove me some goat cheese crumbles, my husband prefers shaved parmesan. If neither goat cheese nor shaved parmesan are available blue or gorgonzola cheese crumbles work as well. Also, if there is no proscuitto or it's not your thing, use some good ol', beloved BACON!

Lastly, lightly dress a few handfuls of delicious, peppery arugula with balsamic dressing. I love, love, LOVE TesseMae's balsamic vinaigrette but any balsamic dressing will do. Generously spread the arugula over the finished flatbread and VOILA! Buon Appetite!

Ingredients:

store bough pizza dough

fig preserves (alternatively you can use peach jam)

your favorite cheese (goat/blue/gorgonzola crumbles or shaved parmesan)

arugula

proscuitto (or BACON!)

optional: Italian seasoning or cracked black pepper

What's cookin' with you?! Link up below!

An InLinkz Link-up

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EOY Writing Follow Up

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

The calm AFTER the storm.... a beautiful thing! I officially finished my FIRST year of KINDERGARTEN yesterday! Cue both fireworks and sobs simultaneously. Loved the kiddos, parents, curriculum, colleagues- e v e r y t h i n g! I just hate that its over. I had this surreal moment while I was hugging them goodbye yesterday, like "oh, wait, you won't be in this room again next year." I think last year's good-bye was so super emotional because I was leaving the school that this year seemed like a no-brainer until they were actually physically leaving my room and I wanted to scream "WAIIIIITTTT, don't go! Come back!!"

(Reading. At first I couldn't do it, then but then I tried again and it worked

and now I am reading hard words. )

Anyway, enough of the sappy- here's something that actually might be of use to you over the next few days... You can read about my post from last year here. Here is the updated K version of this activity :)

To tie my shoes (a common theme!). And make new friends. And to meet my teachers.

Make friends and learning math

and my personal favorite,

tying my shoes, reading, learning alphabet, learning math

Sorry for the crummy pictures, my focus was more the on littles rather than taking aesthetically pleasing photos! Snag the FREEBIE here.

ps- There is also a writing page for, " KID, YOU'LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!"

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EOY Gifts for Retiring Colleague or Administrator

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Yoo hoo! Remember me?! I'd love just ONCE this year to not begin a post like that. Between starting a NEW job at a NEW school this year plus a whole lot going on in my personal life (got dad's blood work back yesterday- 3 months post chemo and so far so good! Keep up the prayers!), it's been nuts trying to maintain blogging. I pinky promise next year I will be better ;) Hopefully you've been keeping up with me on instagram.

ANYWAY, I got a pretty significant response to this post on instagram and wanted to share about it in the hopes it will help some of my friends out there in the world wide web... Our Head of LS is retiring after 15 years this year and while I've only known her a few short months, I wanted to do something special to commemorate her and leave her with lasting memories of all of us. I know one of my favorite bachelorette activities is to stock the bride with tons of vino! I piggy-backed off that idea to create a school-themed gift from us faculty.

Each faculty member selected a school event that our Head will either be surely missed at... or glad to be missing! Back to School Night, Spring Concert, PT Conferences, Field Day, whatever events are "special" at your school. My colleagues wrote down a little message to be put on the bottle and emailed it to me. Then the fun stuff came... 4+ hours of making these customized labels (the weekend before reports were due! What was I thinking?!). On that day, she pops open that bottle, reads the message and thinks warm and fuzzies about all of us. ;)

For those who can't look at this and see exactly what I did... I made these in PowerPoint using Kayla's ADORABLE honeycomb paper and Graphics from the Pond's frames. Presto customized wine labels. Don't have time for all that? Not to worry, HERE is your own EDITABLE version. Save time! I already put in 5 hours so you don't have to.

I then printed the PowerPoint slides onto sheet sized labels and cut them out and attached them to the back of the wine bottles. And by me, I mean all of my colleagues (LOVE them!!) came over for a little cutting and sticking party in my room. Too bad we couldn't drink any of the wine....

HINT: Use the back so that your giftee can see what kind of wine it is!

(don't mind this one, it was my first label and I didn't have good attaching skills!)

The tubs I used to hold the wine were from Party City and cost around $8 a tub. As you can see, this is a relatively affordable, super cute end of year/retiring gift for someone special at school! See more gift ideas in my last post below (eeek! it's my holiday gift idea post!)

PS- check back next week for photos of how I wrapped these up all pretty with a bow and cellophane. Too exhausted to take pics today after carrying them into hiding away from the kiddos! Wine+kindergartners=NO BUENO!

PPS- if you are interested in having these custom labels, here ya go!

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HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE!

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

HO! HO! HO! IT'S THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR!

It sure is! I know it sounds cliche, but I genuinely DO get more happiness out of giving a well-thoughtout, heartfelt gift rather than getting presents. To be honest, part of that is probably because gone are the days of mile-long, color-coded lists which would magically make their way to the North Pole and then be artfully placed under my tree on Christmas morning. Now, my husband and I prefer to get each other something special for our apartment i.e. a new rug or coffee- woo hoo! I always try to take the time to consider each person on my "nice list" and find a little something special for them. Now, we all are teachers here so I am not looking to break the bank. I try to keep all my gifts under $20. Here is the rundown this year.

For my ~~colleagues~~ dear friends this year, I got them monogrammed clipboards or mugs from Personalization Mall. Typically the clipboards run close to $40 but I snagged them during the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales and with shipping each clipboard came to about $20. SCORE! The mugs were a steal at around $12 a piece. I mixed and matched colors depending on what I thought each lady would like.

Next up was my parent volunteers. I picked up some ever-handy mason jars at Michaels Crafts and filled them with Candy Cane Hershey Kisses. Throw a cute little gift tag on there and you're ready to go!

For the kiddos... a no-brainer! Snowman soup! I used all store-brand items to cut down on costs. Individual hot cocoa mix, a handful of marshmallows, mini candy cane, and some hershey kisses to seal the deal.

And, of course, for the students' families... such a beautiful, sweet gift- paperwhites. We got ours at a local gardening store but you can order some here. Have the littles bring in a mason jar or a pickle jar and fill the bottom with rocks for a beautiful aesthetic, or just dirt to keep it simple. The pictures below are after 7 days of growth. I hot glue-gunned a silk white ribbon around the jar and printed this sweet little poem for the students to decorate.

For a class gift... HO HO HANGMAN!, Snowman Hangman, or a little sight word fun with I SPY Christmas and Winter games.

Happy "shopping!" Merry Christmas! and HAPPY HOLIDAYS.

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Pumpkin Week!

Monday, November 3, 2014

From apples to.... PUMPKINS! October is my favorite month of the year, who doesn't love filling their house and classroom (okay, and mouth, too! hello, PSLs from Starbucks!) with the beautiful orange pumpkins and decorative squash. Here is a look at some of what went on in KK during our two week pumpkin theme...

We kicked off our theme study with a trip to the local pumpkin patch on Wednesday. After one rainy tractor ride and a walk through the corn maze we each picked out a pumpkin. For the next two days, we explored the OUTSIDE of our pumpkins...

On Thursday and Friday, we talked about the ribs of a pumpkin and estimated how many ribs we thought our pumpkin had. We also used unifix cubes to estimate the height of our pumpkin. Lastly, we weighed our pumpkin using a good old fashioned food scale.

Using the precious, time-honored book, Pumpkin, Pumpkin by Jeanne Titherington we discussed the lifecycle of the pumpkin and did a little hands on craftivity to accompany the book. Get those kinder fingers cutting!

{seed, sprout, plant, flower, pumpkin, ripe pumpkin}

Sprinkled though out this month we enjoyed playing my Pumpkin Hangman. A fun way to integrate our letter study curriculum. The students have to tell me the sound their letter makes before I can put it up. Each incorrect guess we put up a piece of the pumpkin {1st wrong guess= pumpkin, 2nd wrong guess= piece of the face and so on and so forth}.

I laminate all pieces and then add velcro so it can be used again and again. I've had this particular game for the past 3 years!

The kiddos love to mix it up and pick out their difference faces for the pumpkin.

We also integrated our pumpkin theme into our math lessons. I put out Pumpkin BUMPkin and ROLL a PUMPKIN as math centers for the little ones to enjoy. They loved them so much they wanted to play them during morning work!

Next up was exploring the INSIDE of our pumpkins..

We carved our little guy; well, I attempted to carve. I forgot how hard this was after about 15 years!

We examined the "guts" and talked about the pumpkin parts using the above diagram. Next, we read the book How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin by Margaret McNamara and made our own guesses.

We had everything from 21 to a billion. We invited our second grade neighbors over to count the number of seeds in each pumpkin. They were working on skip counting so my littles were in charge of scooping out the guts and seeds then putting the seeds into piles of 2s, 5s, or 10s. Perfect counting practice!

The grand total was 534!

This picture was taken AFTER a 20 minute cleanup. My room was a DISASTER and smelled like raw pumpkin for about 48 hours !

Lastly, we got to my favorite part of this whole theme... COOKING AND EATING the pumpkins!

WOOO HOOOO!!

Scraping out the insides and roasting the pumpkin (350 degrees for 40 minutes flesh side down and skin on top).

And..... drumroll please....

There wasn't a single crumb left. It was so delicious!

Boil for 10 minutes in salt water (prevents inner seed burning and makes them crispier), dry then massage with salt and olive oil and toast at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. We have been snacking on these all week!

When we were finished we all made a five little pumpkins poem book. They loved being authors for the first time!

As a grand finale we ended our pumpkin unit by completing the pumpkin life cycle. In conjunction with the STUNNING book Pumpkin Jack by Will Hubbell we brought our pumpkin out to our school's Seed to Table garden and planted him. My littles can't wait to take next years crop of kindergarteners to pick the pumpkins that will grow.